Lúnasa with special guest Tim O’Brien | SOPAC | March 22nd

Thursday, March 22, 2018
7:30 PM 8:30 PM 19:30 20:30

South Orange Performing Arts Center 1 SOPAC Way South Orange, NJ, 07079 United States (map)

Google Calendar ICS

Lúnasa with special guest Tim O’Brien

March 22nd | SOPAC | 7:30 PM

Purchase Tickets

Named for an ancient Celtic harvest festival in honor of the Irish god Lugh, patron of the arts, Lúnasa is indeed a gathering of some of the top musical talents in Ireland.

The band is internationally acknowledged as being the finest traditional Irish instrumental group of recent times. They are renowned for their stunning shows honed by superb musicianship and a constant touring cycle. They have performed over 1,500 shows across 36 countries since the band formed in 1997. The band has appeared at internationally renowned venues such as The Hollywood Bowl, National Concert Hall (Dublin), Sydney Opera House and Moscow International House of Music. They have been invited to appear at the White House.

Lúnasa have sold more than quarter of a million albums in the course of the band’s career and boast an impressive back catalogue of 7 highly acclaimed and award-winning studio albums.

Their inventive arrangements and bass driven grooves have steered Irish acoustic music into surprising new territory. Their recordings have been hailed as some of the best and most important world music albums anywhere, while their blend of intelligence, innovation, virtuosity, and passion has brought them to the forefront of Celtic music.

Lúnasa is composed of Kevin Crawford (flutes, low whistles, and tin whistles) who played with Moving Cloud, Trevor Hutchinson (double bass) was a key member of The Waterboys, Ed Boyd (guitar) was with Flook and the Michael McGoldrick Band, Seán Smyth (fiddle and low whistle) is an All-Ireland champion who played with Donal Lunny’s Coolfin and Cillian Vallely (uilleann pipes and low whistles) comes from the famous Vallely artistic clan and has performed with Riverdance. He recently recorded with Bruce Springsteen. Folk Roots magazine has rightly termed them an “Irish music dream team.”

Grammy Award winner Tim O’Brien is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter of extraordinary talent. O’Brien’s presence has been strongly felt not only in his own rich music, but in the many recordings of his songs by such artists as the Dixie Chicks, Garth Brooks, Dierks Bentley, Nickel Creek, Kathy Mattea, The New Grass Revival, and the Seldom Scene, and in his recorded collaborations with Steve Martin, The Chieftains, and innumerable others. Most recently, O’Brien has been performing before capacity crowds in the band of Mark Knopfler.